


finish my sentence (give it a meaning)

by cardinal__sin



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: (keep forgetting that one lmao), Alcohol, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drunken Kissing, Drunkenness, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Graduation, M/M, Music, Pre-Canon, University, pretending CDs are like vinyls at the time borderlands is set, uh i think thats it????, vintage shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25387552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cardinal__sin/pseuds/cardinal__sin
Summary: It's graduation night, and they are drunk. There's some talk about the future, some secrets are revealed and some happy endings are earned.
Relationships: Rhys & Vaughn & Yvette (Borderlands), Rhys & Vaughn (Borderlands), Rhys & Yvette (Borderlands), Rhys/Vaughn (Borderlands)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	finish my sentence (give it a meaning)

**Author's Note:**

> i am endlessly soft for the tftbl hyperion gang, and i just discovered how good gayperion is. like. it makes sense ok.
> 
> the title and the whole fic was inspired by Fejezd be (a song by Ivan & the Parazol which i absolutely recommend checking out. that's the vibe of the music they listen to.)  
> the title is the first half of the chorus translated into english :)

It’s graduation night. It’s graduation night and they’re all _so_ drunk and _so_ happy. The seemingly endless suffering people liked to call getting an education has finally come to its end, and they all have fresh, shiny futures to look forward to.

Their night started in one of the clubs on campus – grad night happened to fall on Yvette’s birthday so she got to call the shots (quite literally), and Rhys and Vaughn had agreed to pay for her drinks as a present. Well. They were always buying for her, the present was that they did it without complaining.

Yvette has style. She’s damn classy and charming and it’s entirely her fault that on their way back to Rhys and Vaughn’s shitty dorm room they need to hold onto each other a bit stronger than usual. Rhys vaguely remembers objecting to the seventh round of shots she ordered, and then it kind of became a blur. He’s trying to focus on his body, one arm around Yvette’s waist and the other around Vaughn’s shoulders because he’s too short for Rhys to hold him properly. He would like to hold him properly though.

Both him and Vaughn are clingy drunks, and many of their “we passed a fucking exam” celebrations had ended with them falling asleep on the couch, a tangle of limbs, bodies pressed close. It’s almost an instinct, by now, to hold his best friend when he’s drunk. It’s just nice.

They get back to their dorm where Yvette plops down into the armchair like she owns it (and considering that she did actually buy it so that she could hang out with Rhys and Vaughn without the three of them needing to cram onto the tiny couch, she does) and pulls out a surprise bottle of vodka from her purse. Rhys is continuously amazed by his best friends.

The reality of _it’s over_ hits Rhys around his third vodka-Cola (which is exactly as gross as it sounds), and he puts it down with a tiny sniffle that’s out of character enough for him to draw his friends’ attention.

“What,” Yvette sneers at him, staying true to her refusal to do _feelings_ in any measure. Vaughn mumbles something similar from where he’s cuddled into Rhys’ side.

“I just… Realized that we’re done here, and we’ll go our separate ways and have our separate jobs, and, I dunno, it sucks.” He scowls half-heartedly at Yvette’s grimace.

“I know, I know, too sappy for you, miss future CEO.”

Yvette doesn’t laugh, though, as she usually would at Rhys making fun of her ambitions. She puts down her own glass with a sigh and slumps back into the armchair. (Yvette is tall and quite intimidating, so Rhys has, somehow over the years, forgotten that she is as much of a twenty-three year old kid as him and Vaughn are, and that she can be hurt and scared and vulnerable. Folded in on herself in the armchair, though, she looks small and afraid of the world.)

“Maliwan offered me a position,” she mumbles, and Rhys’ eyebrows shoot to the middle of his forehead. Vaughn sits up properly. (Rhys pretends he doesn’t mourn the loss of his body heat.)

“It’s a pretty good gig, for a fresh graduate, with nice pay and decent perks. I know we always planned about going to Hyperion together, but… I don’t want to start from the bottom, and they’re giving me one hell of a headstart.”

Rhys wants to feel betrayed for a second. Ever since their first day as friends they’d had their grand plan of taking over Hyperion together. It was always the three of them. Not Rhys alone, no matter how much he idolized Handsome Jack and wanted to have a career like him. Not Rhys and Vaughn, or Rhys and Yvette, or Yvette and Vaughn. Always the three of them, always together.

And now Yvette wants to leave that behind, and for what? An actually humane company, a steady paycheck and respect from her employers?

Oh.

Well, that makes sense.

“I’m happy for you,” Rhys hears himself say and realizes he means it, “that’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer, and you got it. That’s amazing!”

Yvette gives him a genuine, toothy smile, and takes a big sip of her own, equally horrible drink.

Rhys watches her, and forces his heart to unbreak itself.

Yvette leaves soon after, taking the rest of the vodka and a wedge of cheese(??) from their fridge as her birthday present, as she tells them. Rhys is left alone with Vaughn who is slowly drifting off next to him. Rhys refuses to accept that and pokes his best friend in the tummy a couple times to wake him up because Vaughn is soft and ticklish there and Rhys is drunk and kind of a bastard.

It does have the desired effect, though, and Vaughn seems a lot more awake as he yells at Rhys to fucking stop it or else he can sleep in the hallway. Rhys pretends to take the threat seriously and pouts at Vaughn until he can do nothing but laugh at Rhys and tell him he got away with it just this once.

He lies down with his head in Rhys’ lap and Rhys cards his flesh hand through his short hair carefully, decidedly not thinking about how soft his hair is and how long his eyelashes are and how used he’s gotten to this casual intimacy and how it just feels so natural to always be close to Vaughn. He shoves away his musings because thinking makes his head spin, and instead asks Vaughn if he wants to watch something.

“Can we just listen to that one CD you have?” Vaughn asks quietly, and Rhys sighs in accordance. He wiggles out from underneath Vaughn and goes to the shelf where he keeps his small stack of CDs and the battered, old player, his only valuable possessions besides his cybernetics. His fingers find the record Vaughn asked for easily, the familiar, faded colours of the cover catching his eye immediately.

The soft notes of the first song drift quietly through the air and Vaughn smiles a tired smile at Rhys as he recognizes it. It’s some dusty indie rock band that never really got famous back in the day, but the sheer age of the record makes it valuable. Along with the fact that Rhys got it from Vaughn for his birthday back when he started his collection. He had never dared to ask Vaughn just how expensive it was, refuses to think about the implications of such a luxurious present. Besides, they listen the shit out of it, so it’s worth its money, after all.

Rhys sits back onto the couch and Vaughn is back in his lap in an instant, reaches for Rhys’ cybernetic hand, threads their fingers together. Rhys keeps carding through Vaughn’s hair without really thinking about it. They listen to most of the record in silence, sometimes humming along quietly. It’s that easy sort of comfort they only have when they’re drunk and their inhibitions fade. Rhys never wants to sober up again.

“What do you think about Yvette?” Vaughn pipes up at some point. Rhys would have thought that he was fast asleep.

“I’m happy for her,” he shrugs noncommittally, “gonna miss her a lot though.”

“Same,” Vaughn sighs, “it will be weird without her. Never realized we would one day fall apart.”

Rhys voices his agreement with a soft grunt. He doesn’t want to think about it.

“You know I always thought I would be the first one to leave the three of us,” Vaughn muses quietly. Rhys’ blood runs ice cold and his hand stops in Vaughn’s hair.

“What do you mean?” he asks, cautious.

“I’ve gotten plenty of offers just like Yvette.”

Rhys forgets how to breathe for a few moments.

“And?” he wheezes finally, chest tight with anxiety.

“And nothing,” Vaughn mutters, “I turned them down. They weren’t Hyperion.”

“Vaughn…”

“Hyperion is our _dream_ , Rhys, I wasn’t going to give up on it. On you. I’m not an idiot.”

Rhys decides this is the point where he must start crying or else he will explode and, realistically, die. Tears of relief spring from his natural eye, and he laughs shakily. He knows it looks pathetic, but for a moment he really thought he would lose Vaughn, and he’s very much not ready for that.

“Oh,” Vaughn says, and sits up. His eyes shine with concern and sympathy, and Rhys can’t restrain himself, throws himself at Vaughn and wraps him into the tightest hug ever. He presses his face into the crook of Vaughn’s neck and inhales his painfully familiar scent and cries against his skin a bit more. Vaughn holds him, strokes his hands down Rhys’ back.

“I don’t know what the fuck I would do without you,” Rhys hiccups, holding on to Vaughn for life. It hits him hard, the weight of their friendship. He’s known Vaughn for the last five years of his life, they had been through so much, and Vaughn was always there, supporting Rhys and giving him so much confidence. People like to assume it happened the other way around, but truth be told, Rhys used to be a disaster. He was shy and self-conscious, second-guessing himself, while Vaughn was an eighteen-year-old kid smarter than most of the galaxy. Rhys wouldn’t be where he is right now without Vaughn.

“Please don’t ever leave me,” he mumbles as his tears finally subside, and Vaughn murmurs _I won’t_ over and over again until Rhys calms down and pulls away.

“I’m never getting this drunk again,” Rhys chuckles as he wipes his hands across his face, trying to clean up the teary mess, “sorry about that.”

“Nah,” Vaughn shrugs. Rhys’ eyebrows draw together in confusion. He feels like he’s overstepped a boundary there, no matter how close they are, and Vaughn only shrugs it off and says _nah_ and –

“Oh,” says Rhys, when Vaughn pulls away, the same tone Vaughn used when Rhys started crying, and looks at Vaughn with wide eyes. His lips tingle from Vaughn’s kiss, short and clumsy, and he feels heat creeping up his neck in tandem with Vaughn’s blush.

“Yeah,” Vaughn confirms all the unsaid things between them. They stare at each other for a second before Rhys starts giggling uncontrollably at the absurdity of the situation and the giddiness he feels. Vaughn joins in, and they’re just two twenty-three year old idiots who never realized the most obvious thing in the world until the very last moment of their time together.

(It’s hardly their last moment. That moment wouldn’t come for years, tied up in the back of a truck, looking for their dead boss’ body. They would find their way back to each other, but only as friends, both of them having moved on after the destruction of Helios. For now, they just enjoy being young and drunk and looking forward to a shiny, successful career.)

By the time the record plays through and the music stops, they’re both asleep, a tangle of limbs on the shitty little couch, just like all those countless times before. Nothing’s changed, not really. And that’s just how it’s supposed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> small afterthought: yvette took her job at maliwan and later started working for hyperion when they offered her a Very Nice position. Hyperion will do anything to get the rival companies' best assets and Yvette took advantage of this perfectly. We stan. 
> 
> hope you enjoyed this fun little tidbit of softness! feel free to leave kudos or comments (i appreciate them a LOT), or come yell at me on tumblr, instagram or twitter: @cardinalxsin. have a nice day <3


End file.
